Current neuroscience research confirms what creatives intuitively know about being innovative: that it usually happens in the shower. After focusing intently on a project or problem, the brain needs to fully disengage and relax in order for a “Eureka!” moment to arise. It’s often the mundane activities like taking a shower, driving, or taking a walk that lure great ideas to the surface. Composer Steve Reich, for instance, would ride the subway around New York when he was stuck.

For me, beginning is simultaneously exciting and harrowing. My blood churns rapidly; my body is full of energy and a certain tension. I feel awkward, ill equipped and uncomfortable but also grateful for the engagement. The effort is real. Perhaps beginnings should be attempted with regularity. How can the act of beginning be consciously repeated for the sake of the artistic process? Can the final week of rehearsal be approached with what the Buddhist’s call “beginner’s mind?”

I have learned that in the deepest panic around beginning a process, it is best to start with something small and do-able and build upon that. Write a sentence, make one choice or reach out to someone to discuss an issue. And then, as the process unfolds, and as long as you keep at it and stay attentive and resolute, everything else will eventually fall into place.

There’s no time to think up the polite or normal ways to express something theatrically; you have to go with the first idea you get, the one that deeply embarrasses you and that you wouldn’t normally bring up, that you would censor were there time for a sec- ond thought. I have felt the will of a text asserting itself—I’ve felt the drive it has towards living, towards life. Musicians talk about this all of the time, that the instrument is playing them. I feel this way in rehearsal: we have all felt the palpable presence of the text entering the room. My job is to be an open door.

The Acid Test

“I know of one acid test in the theatre. It is literally an acid
test. When a performance is over, what remains? Fun can
be forgotten, but powerful emotion also disappears and
good arguments lose their thread. When emotion and
argument are harnessed to a wish from the audience to
see more clearly into itself – then something in the mind
burns. The event scorches on to the memory an outline, a
taste, a trace, a smell – a picture. It is the play’s central
image that remains, its silhouette, and if the elements are
highly blended this silhouette will be its meaning, this
shape will be the essence of what it has to say. When
years later I think of a striking theatrical experience I find a
kernel engraved on my memory: two tramps under a tree,
an old woman dragging a cart, a sergeant dancing, three
people on a sofa in hell – or occasionally a trace deeper
than any imagery.”
From Peter Brook’s - The Empty Space